Boris Kagarlitsky, the renowned Russian Marxist, had an unexpected appeal trial on February 13, 2024. The prosecutors were seeking to overturn the results of his two-day trial in December 2023, when Kagarlitsky was released with a fine after serving four and a half months in pretrial detention in the Komi Republic, more than one thousand kilometers north of Moscow.

Kagarlitsky was facing up to seven years imprisonment on a charge of “justifying terrorism,” but instead was released with a fine of 609,000 rubles, about $6,500. The charge was absurd on its face, but was part of a generalized attack on the Russian left as a whole and Kagarlitsky’s Rabkor media outlet in particular, serving as a warning that breaking silence on the war would have dire consequences. Indeed, there are fifteen thousand people who have been arrested for opposing the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.

In Kagarlitsky’s case, the charge of justifying terrorism was for ironic remarks he made in a social media video entitled “Explosive Greetings from Mostik the Cat.” The authorities did not get Boris’s joke and argued that Kagarlitsky was justifying the Crimean Bridge explosion. In the video Boris noted that on the eve of the attack congratulatory wishes from Mostik the cat to President Vladimir Putin circulated on Russian social networks. Since the cat was the mascot of the sabotaged bridge, Kagarlitsky joked that he had acted as a provocateur with his congratulations. Boris later remarked that it was probably a poor joke, but hardly sufficient grounds for arrest. He continued, “Moreover, it is assumed that two words are taken, not even the full text, two words. Naturally, there was no approval of the explosion, I insist on this. But there was a phrase, well, you could say, really, it wasn’t a very good joke, to be honest. Unfortunately, not all of my jokes are successful.”